Any way to finish epic 2.0 without....

Starting with ToV expansion, it was very apparent that the game was steering towards rewarding those that crafted, with more than just furniture and appearance items and players that did both, adventure and craft, would have the advantage.
It was just a matter of time before it would be required to get BiS and / or necessary item(s).

2.0 is necessary for raiding as it protects the player from planar energies. It does allow one with the epic to cast that same buff on another in the raid that does not have their 2.0 yet and earlier in the game, we did have raid members that we had to cast the buff on to protect them and the raid.

That you need to be level 100 crafter is kind of annoying .. but considering the length of the questline it's kinda equal to a faction grind. One of the gear up weeks prolly is a double xp week, with that you can level from level 9 crafter to 100 in 8 hours.

IF you still need/want to grind it then:
1 to 9 just craft
9 speak with crafting trainer and you are level 10
10 to 19 just craft
19 speak with crafting trainer and you are level 20
20 to 80 do Rush Orders
80 do the pudding quest if you aim for the Crafters Cloak
80 to 95 do Rush Orders
95 to ~ 97/98 do the tranquil sea crafting timeline (decent if you want a chance for 66 slot back pack, sidersilk from great divide crafting timeline is needed to craft that, but can be bought from broker as well)
98 to 100 do Rush Orders

Cannot get a PUG to save his life. Only run in group zones and my DPS is for crap because I'm missing all the bonuses that come with the epic.”

That is a shame. On AB, I never refuse to run a group because a member doesn't have their epic 2.0 and I know for a fact we have people that don't mind that either! You should have seen some of the groups I was in with not only my main, but also an alt that hasn't run the KA timeline, let alone even started her epic! I guess on AB we just want something to do, since our player-base is so small now.

Cannot get a PUG to save his life. Only run in group zones and my DPS is for crap because I'm missing all the bonuses that come with the epic.”

Vunder, we don't call our for PuG's a lot on IoR as we try to run guildies through Heroics/ Experts. That said, if I am on, you can give me a shout and we'll drag you along if there is room. Instead of excluding folks, we choose what we are going to run based on whom we have available. We want everyone to get a chance to run

“Vunder, we don't call our for PuG's a lot on IoR as we try to run guildies through Heroics/ Experts. That said, if I am on, you can give me a shout and we'll drag you along if there is room. Instead of excluding folks, we choose what we are going to run based on whom we have available. We want everyone to get a chance to run

Kitty”

Thanks, but was referring to my wizard on Maj'Dul. Islanders are totaly different people =D

“If you do crap dps before the epic you will do crap after. The wizard epic is not a massive turning point.”

This is true to an extent, the fervor/fervor overcap/combat mit debuff help a lot, plus the extra damage on fusion is pretty huge, though if you don't have the Wizard class down by then you're probably too far behind the curve, so this is a yes/no thing about bad before/after epic.